An Inside Look At China’s Internet Population

Deborah Fallows, Senior Research Fellow, Pew Internet & American Life Project, has just published a fascinating report detailing the demographics of Chinese internet users. Deb, an American currently living in Shanghai, notes that “there are now an estimated 137 million internet users in China, second in number only to the United States, where estimates of the current internet population range from 165 million to 210 million. The growth rate of China’s internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years.”

The implications of this growth are huge, for the Chinese people and everyone else in the world. This should be a must-read report for both searchers and search marketers alike. An abstract of the report, with a link to the full paper, is here.